html_serialize: Serialize nodes as HTML

In zuhtml: Parse 'HTML' with a Bundled 'Gumbo' Parser

Serialize nodes as HTML

Description

Produces normalized HTML following the WHATWG serialization algorithm, not the original input bytes: end tags the input left out are written, attribute values are always double-quoted, and &, <, >, ⁠"⁠ and non-breaking spaces are escaped as the algorithm requires. Parsing the result gives back the same tree, except where the HTML standard itself does not guarantee that (for example markup that tree construction rearranges).

Usage

html_serialize(x, outer = TRUE, pretty = FALSE)

Arguments

x	A zuhtml_document or zuhtml_nodeset.
outer	If TRUE, each node with its own markup, like outerHTML; if FALSE, only its contents, like innerHTML. A document or fragment has no markup of its own, so both give its contents.
pretty	If TRUE, lay block-level elements out on their own lines, indented two spaces per level, for reading. Inline content stays on its line, whitespace-only text between blocks is dropped, and the contents of ⁠<pre>⁠, ⁠<textarea>⁠, ⁠<script>⁠ and ⁠<style>⁠ are left exactly as they are. The result is for people, not for parsing again: the added whitespace becomes text.

Details

Serialization is not sanitization: ⁠<script>⁠ elements and ⁠javascript:⁠ URLs are written as they were parsed.

as.character() on a nodeset is html_serialize().

Value

A character vector as long as x; NA for missing nodes.

See Also

Other node values: html_attr(), html_markdown(), html_name(), html_strings(), html_text(), html_text_clean()

Examples

doc <- html_parse("<p class=x>One<br>Two & <b>three</p>")
html_serialize(doc)
p <- html_children(html_children(html_root(doc))[2])
html_serialize(p)
html_serialize(p, outer = FALSE)
cat(html_serialize(doc, pretty = TRUE))

# To write a document to a file:
path <- tempfile(fileext = ".html")
writeLines(html_serialize(doc), path)

zuhtml documentation built on Oct. 6, 2026, 5:06 p.m.